Sunday, 17 May 2015

Social WiFi& Marketing Analytics

These days many consumers,
restaurants and retail establishments have adopted the use of WiFi or Free WiFi
hotspot services to their customers in the greater Toronto area. While offering
free WiFi and mobile hotspot services to your customers is a must and a
necessity in the mind of the consumer. A recent study & survey was conducted
in the streets of Toronto to see how many consumers of the ages between 17yrs of
age & 65 years of age would expect a retail or restaurant establishment to
have free WiFi services. Age groups between 17rs and 45yrs reported a 90% yes or
agreed that offering a Free hotspot service is a must for any type of
hospitality environment. Group ages between 46yrs and 65yrs of age reported a
70% yes it should be offered and a 30% no/doesn’t matter response.

With
the retail and restaurant establishments who currently offer a free WiFi system
run into a number of challenges and security implementations that the USA and
Candiangovernment . These governments are looking to put strict polies on
offering free WiFi services. Many organizations who are providing “Free Hotspot
Zones” should follow certain security restrictions of not allowing their
customers to browse certain restricted websites. This is usually offered by
hosting a controller type of environment that has the capabilities of content
filtering.

Another topic that always comes up is when offering a social
WiFi solution or free WiFi zone is how do you control the amount of data each
user is using? Two solutions can usually be presented to a customer by most VARS
or technology vendors. The first is to have the technology vendor provide them
with a soft solution or software based content filtering and bandwidth limited
application that integrates with their current hardware. You can view a sample
video of a well-known technology solutions provider www.connectsim.ca . This
software solution is probably the most cost effective solution as there is no
need to purchase multiple hardware products to deploy a social WiFi hotspot
offering. The offering is cloud based with the hardware. The social wifi
application is usually hosted as well. This helps the small/medium business
owner as this eliminates the need to have an onsite IT staff. The majority of
retail and restaurant establishments shouldn’t have to manage or engage in any
type of technical needs for the WiFi social offering.

The second
solution to start a social WiFi offering is to purchasethe additional hardware
from a technology vendor and not have to worry about additional costs of
licenses and monthly fees. The only additional monthly fees you would need to
maintain are the hosted monthly social WiFi fee which ranges between
$25cad/month and up to $50cad/month depending on features you require. Based on
our knowledge and from what the majority of restaurants and retail stores are
following is that they are mostly selecting a managed service offering and not
choosing the route of purchasing their own hardware. When trying to manage your
own hardware a restaurant owner will have to worry about compatible hardware
with the hotspot social WiFi application. The costly maintenance contract for
the hardware, the firmware updates on the access point and many more costs that
are involved.

Many restaurants in the greater Toronto area are choosing
companies such as Connectsim.ca to manage their wireless, licenses and anything
related to their social wifi campaigns. We approached Connectsim at a local
restaurant trade show to ask them the typical costs to start a campaign with
them and how long a typical contract runs. From our quick 10 minute conversation
with Connectsim their mid Social WiFi package starts at around $500/month with a
12 year commitment. What this includes was the following ;

Free Wireless Zone Plan -
Includes a WiFi network diagram of a wireless heat map that shows the type of
coverage you would receive for your customers. You must provide a diagram of
your facility. Wireless Router - Includes one of their basic wireless routers
that covers a space of about 800 sq ft. Optional upgrade.

Signage-
Includes a 33”x80” custom design retractable banner that displays a “Free WiFi
Zone” and some other offerings or specials you might want your customers to see
on the banner.

Advertising Banner Flag or 3’x8’ vinyl Banner - The
advertising flag is a great concept especially for restaurants as it’s an
attractive flying feather banner that really grabs the attention of your
customers.

High Quality Coasters - Up to 12 free high quality glossy
coasters each with your logo and twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn icons to show they
can sign in with their social WiFi media account. Corporate Design Package -
Includes a menu restaurant design while on each page has a “Free WiFi Zone”
connection symbol. Prints are an additional upgrade.

Coupon Campaign
-Connectsim.ca will manage your Facebook page for the year by sending out 2
coupon campaigns to your Facebook followers. They design a coupon and wait for
approval from the customers end prior to engaging your customers.

Splash
Page Change Management- Includes the opportunity to change your splash page
twice a year. Although we think twice a year is not enough as you would want to
offer more incentives to your WiFi users on your offerings. A great splash page
we’ve seen at a local restaurant was when the customer landed on the splash page
“It said every Tuesday the first 20 tables receive a complimentary draft beer of
their choice”. In turn this had the restaurant company’s twitter and facebook
followers to post and retweet these message to their existing friends. A great
marketing concept.

The restaurant also ran another splash page design
that offered the first 20 tables receive a voucher for their kids under 10 to
eat for free. When speaking to the owner of this company they mentioned “Since
we’ve installed our new social WiFi campaign our sales have grown by 30%, it
keeps our customers informed and creates a great bond between our Facebook&
twitter followers.

Preventive
Maintenance - Connectsim’s technicians will perform a preventive maintenance to
make sure there are no interference signals that could be interrupting users on
the WiFi network.

Content & bandwidth Filtering - Their team will
add specific content filtering to your network and will limit the amount of
bandwidth each user uses in your environment. This is extremely useful as old
WiFi zone providers didn’t have a limit on bandwidth.